during the war. Many are returning now,
coming back with the bags that were packed
so hastily for hair-raising escapes by car to
Damascus and Amman, or an all-night voy
age to Cyprus.
One who didn't leave is Aida Marini, a
well-known Lebanese artist. During those
eight years, she lived in Christian east Bei
rut, close to the Green Line. "I couldn't
leave," she said. "I would have felt like a de
serter. "Rather, Aida Marini endured hellish
nights of ceaseless shellings. She awoke one
morning to find a rifle bullet embedded in the
frame of one of her pictures in a hallway.
"One night the noise of the shellings was
like disco music-thump thump thump de
thump. So I got out of bed and started danc
ing to the tempo of the explosions, and just
as I got the most graceful movement, they
changed the tempo-thump de thump
thump thump. I went back to sleep."
Now, Mrs. Marini says, she feels she can
leave the country "without guilt." And that
is a measure of the healing of Beirut.
on the corner with his pushcart, defend
ing the integrity of his fruit against the
insults of the women who told him it
was a sin to ask such prices. But his fruit was
the best in all Beirut: Apples arranged in a
perfect pyramid, each one cushioned on a
piece of purple tissue paper, each one buffed
to a mirror shine; and oranges sweet of meat
and swollen with juice, also displayed with
flair, in rows of six, a peddler-poet's sestina
in citrus. He was on that corner almost daily
for 25 years, and now he is gone.
I learned that Fuad had left in 1981 to live
with a daughter in Brazil, and that ten of the
women he haggled with all those years had
come to the airport to see him off.
Fuad should be back here now, to hear
about the plans for the city where he was
born-the subway they hope to build one
day, the new parks and pedestrian malls,
the underground parking, the freeway,
the new commercial center. Perhaps he
wouldn't understand it all, certainly not the
decision against bringing back the trolley
cars. But surely Fuad would comprehend
the bloom of hope for a city suddenly struck
with peace after nearly a decade of tumult.
So that the dream doesn't obscure reality,
it must be confined to Beirut. Elsewhere,
Lebanon still lies scored and quartered in its
dazzling setting of sea and mountains, and
valleys through which have passed prophets
and armies. Even after Israeli troops with
drew from Beirut last October, as many as
3,000 PLO fighters were believed to have re
turned to the country and regrouped in the
north, around Tripoli. Large numbers of
Syrian troops remained in the Bekaa Valley.
Israeli forces continued to control the south.
There was no letup in the tensions outside
Beirut, nor was there likely to be, as long as
other nations assign their armies and their
proxy wars to Lebanese soil.
More than that, it has now become sharp
ly clear that if Lebanon is to survive as a sov
ereign nation-if it is to avoid irrevocable
partition-accommodations by both Chris
tians and Muslims will have to be made, or,
as a wise man I met in Beirut said: "The
Maronite Catholic who calls himself a Phoe
nician will have to become more Arab, and
the Sunni and Shiite who call themselves Ar
abs will have to become more Phoenician."
He paused. "If we can do that, if Lebanese
citizens give as much loyalty to the govern
ment as they do to their clans and sects, we
will make it."
M EANWHILE, the heart that is Beirut
is on the mend, and the goodness of
that is awash in the souls of many:
I went one morning to east Beirut
with a friend, a Druze who lived before the
war in that Christian section called Ashra
fiya. He was born there and was raised in a
house with arched windows under which
bougainvillea grew. When the fighting
started, he had to leave, go to the other side,
and the house was taken over by a Christian
family he didn't even know.
He looked at the house for a long time
from the road where we stood. There was a
child playing in the yard. The Druze called
him over and said, "Is that your house,
boy?" And the boy said it was. "It is not your
house. Do you understand, boy? It is not
your house!" He was shouting, and the boy
began to cry.
He said nothing more, other than, "It's all
right," as he swept the boy up in his arms
and held him close, rocking from side to side
to spill the fear from the small body.
Q
NationalGeographic, February1983
286